---
title: The duck hopped up till it could talk to the dog. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The duck hopped up till it could talk to the dog. Who acts: duck. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/95/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, sentence 95

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The duck hopped up till it could talk to the dog.

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**Who acts:** duck · **What happens:** hop up, talk

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (duck), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg5615:31:95
# text = The duck hopped up till it could talk to the dog.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	hopped	hop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hop up** | past | the duck |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **talk** | could | duck |  |  |  |  | to the dog | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to dog=Co-Agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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